Chocolate and Zucchini - Book

Chocolate and Zucchini, by Clotilde Dusoulier, is based on her food blog.  I think the blog is better, but it's nice to have a book in your hands to cook from, rather than running back and forward to the computer or having a piece of A4 printing paper that always seems to get wet, dirty, and smudged.  We've tried two recipes from it:  the Gâteau au Yaourt and Tarte Chocolat Caramel.  Before the book goes back to the library (which is any day now because it's either due or coming up due and it's already been renewed!), we're going to try the Gâteau Chocolat Framboise too.  The yoghurt cake was really yummy, not as yoghurty as I had expected or hoped for, but it was dense, rich, moist, and sweet.  The chocolate caramel tart didn't go so well.  I think this is because Mum convinced me that our regular cream is the same as double cream for Americans/Europeans.  This is not the case I think.  So the caramel didn't set, and the chocolate ganache only just did after a night in the fridge.  I think I screwed up the ganache because I didn't let the cream boil, but I'm always scared to let milky things catch.  The pastry tasted good and was really crispy, but it flaked a bit too much and was a little hard around the edges (from being in the fridge?), meaning a lot of it ended up staying in the pie dish stuck to the sides.  I really want to try it again, and get it right by using crème fraîche for the caramel (I've never used this ingredient, so we'll see how it goes) and boiling the cream like I'm supposed to for the ganache.

Chocolate and Zucchini blog can be found here.